Killing Butterflies (and Suffocating the One You Love)

To my lovely dear daughter, Sheena....


I'd like to talk to you all about why people take things of beauty and destroy them by putting them in cages.


When I was a 7 or 8 year old boy, a second-grader, and living in the country in Minnesota, my school class gave us the assignment to capture butterflies and bring them to school for some sort of Science class experiment. 


One of the neighborhood girls, and a classmate of mine, Paula Nelson, and I went out to capture butterflies together. Paula was a nice girl but I didn't have a crush on her like I did with some of the other girls in class.


While chasing butterflies together, we spied a large yellow beauty fluttering about the roof of my house. The butterfly lit upon the rain drainage pipes. I gathered a ladder and started to climb up in order to capture the butterfly with my net.

As I climbed, Paula started chanting, "Mike! You can do it! You can do it!" I began to swell with pride and because of this cheering began to to develop a real liking for Paula... 


Everyone wants to feel important and Paula did that for me at the time. I will never forget how I felt at that moment. Someone was truly cheering for me! I was so happy! Even though I was but a small boy, I will never forget Paula for making me feel so good about myself. I have thought about her many times over the years. I hope she found a true soul-mate and is truly happy! Thank you Paula!


In a way, capturing a butterfly and making it "mine" is also a way for children to increase their personal worth and add to their lives "treasures."


But I digress...


I neared the butterfly slowly and took up my net. Paula continued chanting. I swatted my net down upon the beautiful butterfly and... It escaped and fluttered away.


I felt defeated for a moment and felt that I had let Paula down.


A few days later, back at school, I viewed all the captured butterflies the other children brought into the classroom laying dead, side by side, in a row. Some kids had very many of them. I had failed to catch even one. As I viewed the butterflies, it dawned on me that dead butterflies were not beautiful but were actually trash.


All those wings of grace and color and dreams lying there were like a pile of old and dirty crayons: cold, lifeless and used up. Of no use to anyone or anything.  


Simply garbage.

The butterflies flying in the blue skies are actually a miracle of grace and give us, children and adults, dreams... Dreams of flying over the mountains and clouds. Dreams of being who we've always wanted to be! 


The butterflies laying still and lifeless in a cage give us death and dispair. 


For the first time in my life, I was glad that I didn't catch any of those poor butterflies. I wished I had had a time machine and could help all those dead butterflies go back in time where I could have prevented their capture and set them free.


I will never forget that experience.


When my lovely second daughter, Sheena, was a small girl of seven and a second-grader, she and her friends had some nets and were out catching butterflies in the neighborhood near Yokohama. To my great surprise they caught a very many of them and put them in a plastic, see-through clear box that had holes in the top. Even though the box was designed for insects, the holes were so small the butterflies suffocated and died....


The children had so merry a time a capturing these creatures... They were so happy that they brought the butterflies to me for my approval. But I didn't approve. The memories of my time as a child and seeing all those dead butterflies came racing back to me.


I foolishly got angry at the small children.


"These poor butterflies are beautiful and a gift from God when they are flying free. But now that you've captured them, they have died a terrible death in a box. Dead and lifeless they are not beautiful to anyone anymore. They are merely trash to be thrown away. Please, dear children, don't take these beautiful creatures and capture them. They are only beautful if they are flying free."


I learned that lesson as a small child. I was hoping that these small children would learn it too...


I was reminded again of that lesson again last night.


A beautiful girl, with dreams and visions all her own, marries... Then the husband takes her away and puts her in a cage where she suffocates.


In the cage she suffers, cannot breathe, begins to lose herself and is, of course, extremely unhappy.

The husband thinks he loves her and so he captures her and puts her away... He puts her into a cage where she languishes and eventually will become resentful and will whither and die...

Is that what the husband really wants? Does he think that this situation is really what's best for his happiness too?

When you stop to think about it, if he truly loved her, he'd make her happy and set her free. Everyone desperately desires freedom.

Why do so many men never grow out of their childhood phase?

True love between two people will come from a sympathy for each other and putting the other's feelings first... How could putting one in a cage possibly do anything but create a feeling of resentment and start tearing down the dream that was the intention at the start?

When my daughter was a small girl, she refused to come and sit with her grandfather. "Why won't she sit on my lap?" The grandfather complained to me!

I told him, "Because, when she wants to get up and go play, you won't allow her too. You hold her down so she can't leave. Let her come and go freely as she pleases and wishes to do and then, and only then, will she sit willingly on your lap." 

He followed my advice and she willingly began sitting on his lap again.

Men! Do not destroy that what you love! Do not strangle that which you want to grow. Do not destroy, hold, capture and cage!

Women! Life is short! The cage once closed is rarely opened again. If it does crack open, for even a bit, dash and make yourselves free while you can! For the chance to do so disappears as your youth and energy dissipates! Do not allow yourselves to be captured and caged! If you are caged, then set yourselves free! 

Men and women! Be free. You can be free and still share the love! Share the love every moment of everyday even when you are apart! Always understand and feel sympathy for each other. Life is short, we all have much suffering to go through. Let us not be the cause of more suffering for each other.

Life is bad enough without have those who supposedly love us being the source of our misery. Life is bad enough without those, who supposedly love us and want to care for us, putting us in a cage. 


Share. Respect. Set free! In this way, and this way only, can you build the one and only true love.


For Sheena, Julie, Wendy and Asami....

Betrayal and Loyalty: The Rules of Give and Take

We all have a sort of radar about people. Some of us are astute judges of character. Some not so much. Even so, those who are usually good at figuring people's motives out may get the short end. We sometimes we get burned by people we thought were on our side. We get cheated or ripped off by people who we had hoped were going to help us. Sometimes getting backstabbed by these sorts of people destroys our motivations and we veer off the course we had chosen.

DERWOOD ANDREWS - BACKSTABBERS

We get angry that these people who we trusted betrayed us. They become lowlife scum in our eyes... We obsess about them. We begin to get angry, resentful and maybe filled with hate. 


Not a healthy situation. 


Remember also, though, that it always takes two to tango so if you feel cheated or abused, part of it is your fault. People cannot take advantage of you unless you allow them to. I know I sound all high and mighty when I say this, but I speak from experience. I've felt betrayed before too and, unfortunately, done my fair share of betrayal back.


For the betrayal I committed I will always regret what I did until the day I die. In my case, it wasn't their fault. It was all my fault. I can never make the betrayal I committed "right" or fix things. Past is past. But my regret lives on forever. It's always on my mind somewhere.... 


I've had two people who recently told me about their experiences with betrayal. They both seemed a bit bitter. Both of them work in the music business. Both of them felt betrayed. The music business is famous for betrayal and broken promises. The music business and show business in general is the land of broken dreams.


But the sort of betrayal that I am talking about today is not limited to music or show business. This sort of trickery and betrayal is a part and parcel of human nature and can been witnessed anywhere and everywhere in any human endeavor. Being backstabbed and hurt by those your trusted happen in any business and in any personal relationship. We have to be careful.


A friend of mine recently quit Facebook. Her leaving Facebook is a loss for the world of music. She is instrumental in getting many rock bands the world over a chance at the big time. Of course, once these bands and artists use her to get what they want and they get their big chance (or what they perceive as their big break) they dump her and the people that helped them get to where they wanted to go. It's an old story.


It reminds me of a time long ago when my band often played at a club in Los Angeles called Club 88. The owner was a guy named Wayne (super nice man) and he gave us our first big break and let us play at his club. Wayne was married to a Japanese woman so perhaps he felt affinity for me as his kids were half-Japanese too (there weren't that many of us half-Japanese kids back in those days). Wayne was the only one who would let us play at a club in Los Angeles. We began playing at Club 88 once a month.

Club 88 poster without my band on it!

One day, after some piddling success on the FM radio in LA, my band arranged to play at another, bigger and more famous club across town. We decided that we would stop playing regularly at Club 88 (it wasn't as cool as this new club) and told Wayne that we weren't going to play at Club 88 anymore. As we loaded up our equipment into the van in the back parking lot behind his club, Wayne came out, looked me straight into the eyes and said, "Nice to know you guys are moving up in the world. Don't forget who helped you when you needed help and see you on the way down." 


His words shot through my heart like a silver bullet. I was stunned, speechless.


Later on, on the way down, I was too ashamed to go see him to ask if we could play his club again. We never played there nor met Wayne again.


I was a selfish jerk. I'm sure that when he agreed to let us play his club, we said things like, "Yeah! We'll always play your club even if we get really famous. Sure!" He'd probably heard that one a million times.


What a big lie.


It's like this in any business. When people want something from you, they will promise you the world. But they don't mean it.


The music business, like 99% of all businesses, ultimately is a business of trust. It takes a long time to build trust, but it takes just one action to destroy that trust. In the case of the music business most people come and go every 3 ~ 6 years. I think it is because the ones who can't make either just don't have "it" or, if they do, they are dishonest. I have met many talented people in the music industry who had talent but they didn't make the big time or floundered because they were untrustworthy. There are so many of those, I couldn't name them all.


There's no way you'll make it to the big time without the help of the people around you. They see what you are doing. They see how you treat people. If you think you can step on people all the way to the top, then you are dreaming. It can't be done (excepting in the movies about Hollywood!) 


In Japan, there are only a handful of people (just 5 or 6 foreigners) who have been in the music business for over 25 years and we all know each other. We may not be friends but we know each other, are respectful and can meet and have a laugh when the occasion arises.


Like I said, there have been innumerable people who came and went. I like to think most of those disappeared because they weren't honest. They were the type of people who would use you and promise you anything in order to get you to help them and, once you did help them, they'd dump you faster than a half-eaten Big Mac that's been sitting in the back of the car for the last week. 


In the case of the music business, be wary of people who talk smooth and nice and say "Yeah! Let's work together! You and me." Then when it comes to what you get paid, it is little or free because they say, "There's no money, but let's do it for the music!"


Sure. You do the music for free. They do it for the money using your music.


Now the point of this post... In my current new business, I often talk to music people and musicians, club owners and artists. I have learned my lesson, I never promise the world. I want to share with you a tidbit about how you can protect yourself in your business, any business, and get what you want whenever a "salesman" comes to you and asks for your help in his project. It's simple. Make every proposition a 50/50 proposition.


I don't mean 50/50 for money necessarily. I mean, you hear them out. Listen to what they want you to do for them (ignore the part about, "Let's work together! Let's do it for the music!") and then you make your requests about what it is that you want them to do for you. If they can't do your request or are unable to politically help you out, then there's no point in dealing with this person unless you are talking 50/50 on money. It's that simple.




Here's how I do it. I run a new company that helps artists promote their events and sell tickets. My company gets a commission for every ticket sold. The artists do not need to use our service. They can keep doing things the old way they always have: allow people to pay at the door. It's worked that way pretty well for decades.


My service allows them to sell advanced sale tickets and to promote on Social media so it is a powerful marketing and advertising tool. Some artists (and events and charities) have used our service and sold over 700 advanced sale tickets. Some events were sold out in two days! Now that is promotional power! But still, like I said, the old way has worked pretty well for a long time so many are not eager to change, don't want to think about change, and are suspicious of new things (of course).


Whenever I make a deal with someone, this is what I say,


"Here's the deal. I help you. You help me. This is what I want. Now, what do you want in return?" (I can give them airplay or promote them other ways too).  Doing this keeps everything professional and platonic. There's none of this slimy "do it for the music" or some other lofty ideal not based in the real world. 


I help you. You help me. I know where you stand. You know where I stand. None of this, "You help me out now and I help you out later" nonsense. It works out best that way. This is the professional way of handling business and the only good way to do so. If you do not handle your business this way, people will not respect you and they will think they can take advantage of you.


Remember, you have something they want. That means they must at least deal with you on equal terms.


Also remember that trust is so important so if you do promise to do something then you had better damned well do what you said you were going to do. The only excuse for not keeping a promise would be a 'death in the family' and that 'death' had better be yours. Promises are made to be kept.


There is nothing wrong with being professional and asking for remuneration (of some sort) for something that someone wants you to do for them. If, after a long time, you become friends and build trust with that person, you can begin to accept what they say at face value. Because, like I said, if they are running around doing sneaky stuff, they usually don't last more than a few years.    


Handling your business this way and knowing these things is how you can build true friendship, a true business partner or even to find your true soul mate in life.

BEATLES VS. MONKEES - PAPERBACK BELIEVER

This is a great example of a 50/50 deal!

It is give and take... If you are the one doing all the giving and the deal sounds too good to be true, it usually is. 


You are important and what you have and can do is valuable. Protect it like a professional would.


Like Shakespeare wrote: "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players." Exactly! So manage your stage appearance in life as any professional manager or agent would do: Professionally. Always understand the rules of give and take.




For Allison Sane and Ohga. Luv!